According to WikiLeaks’ latest document dump, I’m a tool of the Mossad. Does the fact that I scooped Julian Assange have anything to do with it?

I’ve been a professional journalist covering security and intelligence matters for a quarter of a century. But I woke up Monday morning to find out that I had suddenly turned into an “information mule.”

This unusual explanation of my career appeared in a press release sent Sunday night by WikiLeaks, the international anti-privacy organization that has leaked thousands upon thousands of U.S. diplomatic memos. WikiLeaks, the release announced, had come into possession of millions of emails over a period of seven years from Stratfor, a private corporation based in Texas, which, according to its website, provides “geopolitical analysis of international affairs, including what’s happening, why it’s happening, and what will happen next” and is commonly known as a private intelligence organization. In WikiLeaks’ paranoid dialect, Stratfor “fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations.”

I have known Fred Burton, a senior researcher and editor at Stratfor, since he contacted me a few years ago to ask about my views regarding a book he was writing on the mysterious murder in July 1973 of Col. Joe Alon, Israel’s Air Force attaché, in Washington, D.C. A year or so later the book came out in English and Hebrew, and a colleague at the Israeli daily Haaretz and I wrote about it.

Apparently that was enough for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who awaits a court decision in London to be extradited to Sweden to face rape charges. As a professional propagandist with a mind captivated by conspiracy theories, he is a master of innuendo.

Smearing me as a pawn of the Israeli government is a clumsy effort by Assange to sully my name and my reputation for petty personal revenge. WikiLeaks’ press release also characterizes me as someone who has “channeled tips to the Mossad.” It’s not the first time that I’ve been accused of being a Mossad agent, contact, facilitator, or God knows what else. I never was.

My relationship with Assange, so to speak, began a year ago. He phoned and offered me an interview. I consulted with my editors, and we agreed we wanted it. A few days later he called again, this time with all sorts of demands and preconditions. He demanded that he would be granted the right to censor the interview before publication and that I would ask no questions about references he had made about the nature of Jews. In return, he promised to provide me and my paper with new documents about Israel that had not yet been published.

We rejected his offer on the spot. Instead, my Haaretz editors told me to try to get the WikiLeaks documents from other sources. Within a few weeks I succeeded. I brought the documents to my editors on a disk that contained all the documents that were in Assange’s possession: 250,000 U.S. State Department cables, which contain nearly 30 million words. I gained access to them by practicing journalism, and without violating any laws in any countries.

In April, Haaretz published a series of more than 100 stories based on cables that had to do with Israel, Israelis, and the Middle East. In Assange’s paranoid view, this was tantamount to a conspiracy to “move WikiLeaks U.S. diplomatic cables to Israel.”

Hours before the publication of the first article in the series, after reading a preview on our website, Assange called Avi Zilberberg, the deputy editor of Haaretz, and demanded that we stop publication. He had the chutzpah to claim that the documents belonged to him and that if we published them, we would be infringing his “intellectual property.” Needless to say, the deputy editor turned down his request, but Assange bombarded Zilberberg with more phone calls, which always ended with cursing me as an S.O.B.

The stories we published drew a large readership inside and outside Israel. We also exposed some troubling remarks made by Assange that reeked of anti-Semitism and revealed his strange relationship with one Israel Shamir, an infamous anti-Semite and anti-Zionist. Haaretz and the Guardian reported that Shamir was appointed as Assange’s representative in Russia.

Because of my legitimate and professional journalistic work and that of my colleagues, I’ve now been added to the long list of Assange’s enemies. The list includes not only governments, armies, intelligence agencies, and corporations but also prestigious media outlets such as the New York Times, the Guardian and others. I am proud to be in their company.

Yossi Melman is a longtime reporter on strategic affairs, intelligence, and nuclear issues. He is writing a book about the history of the Israeli intelligence community.

WAIT, WHY DO I HAVE TO PAY TO COMMENT?
Tablet is committed to bringing you the best, smartest, most enlightening and entertaining reporting and writing on Jewish life, all free of charge. We take pride in our community of readers, and are thrilled that you choose to engage with us in a way that is both thoughtful and thought-provoking. But the Internet, for all of its wonders, poses challenges to civilized and constructive discussion, allowing vocal—and, often, anonymous—minorities to drag it down with invective (and worse). Starting today, then, we are asking people who'd like to post comments on the site to pay a nominal fee—less a paywall than a gesture of your own commitment to the cause of great conversation. All proceeds go to helping us bring you the ambitious journalism that brought you here in the first place.

I NEED TO BE HEARD! BUT I DONT WANT TO PAY.
Readers can still interact with us free of charge via Facebook, Twitter, and our other social media channels, or write to us at letters@tabletmag.com. Each week, we’ll select the best letters and publish them in a new letters to the editor feature on the Scroll.

We hope this new largely symbolic measure will help us create a more pleasant and cultivated environment for all of our readers, and, as always, we thank you deeply for your support.

Assange doesn’t merely have a “strange relationship” with Holocaust denier Israel Shamir AKA Jurgen Ermash among other aliases. According to Brit journalist Nick Cohen, author of “What’s Left” and “You Can’t Read this Book”, Assange provided Shamir with information Shamir has used to assist the dictatorial government of Belarus to repress the dissident movement there:

“…

Getting information from the Belarusian security apparatus is a hard task. But here is what we know.

Assange allowed Israel Shamir, a genuinely sinister Holocaust denier, to take unredacted US State Department cables to Belarus. These were pure gold for Lukashenko’s KGB because they contained the names of opposition figures who had spoken to American officials.

Shamir boasted in the far-left US magazine Counterpunch that Wikileaks had ‘revealed how… undeclared cash flows from US coffers to the Belarus “opposition”.’ (Shamir’s scare quotes.)

Since Haaretz (Like the NYT and the Guardian) is also anti-Israel it’s natural that he would offer you the material

daniel teeboomsays:

February 28, 2012 - 9:54 am

“It’s not the first time that I’ve been accused of being a Mossad agent”

Damn, do you at least get hot babes?

Willsays:

February 28, 2012 - 11:27 am

“According to WikiLeaks’ latest document dump, I’m a tool of the Mossad. Does the fact that I scooped Julian Assange have anything to do with it?”

No. The fact that you are a tool of Mossad does though.

John Fulmersays:

February 28, 2012 - 11:32 am

The Fred Burton you refer to called for waterboarding Julian Assange — documented in the same series of STRATFOR emails. Perhaps you should choose your colleagues more carefully, sir. Or do you also support the use of torture to get what you want?

Chayasays:

February 28, 2012 - 11:36 am

As I read the article, the bottom of the last paragraph was not scrolled onto the screen. I read the first sentence of the paragraph, thinking to myself that the author was in good company. So the last sentence was a good ending.

And isn’t it the countries who are at odds with the rest of the world (North Korea and Iran) who agree to a meeting and then start adding demands and pre-conditions? So those tactics by Assange are not unexpected either.

Borgsays:

February 28, 2012 - 9:54 pm

I think that Israel Shamir is a guest editor of Haaretz

Kubrikonsays:

February 29, 2012 - 4:32 pm

Not that there is anything wrong with working for or with the Mossad anyway. In any case, the Stratfor leaks are harebrained manifestations of the imagination of intelligence dilettantes.

Assange is better ignored as a sickly albino mosquito buzzing around the nether regions of unseemly regimes.

ambrosine shitritsays:

March 5, 2012 - 3:24 am

So its not nice to be told you are a “Mossad” agent? I would be quite proud for people to think I work for Mossad, or a “mule” for the Israelis.

Just saying of course.

Name (required)Email (required, will not be published)Website (optional)

Message

2000

Your comment may be no longer than 2,000 characters, approximately 400 words. HTML tags are not permitted, nor are more than two URLs per comment. We reserve the right to delete inappropriate comments.